Forty Under 40

Mary Cierebiej, 39

Manager of attraction and expansion,
Team Lorain County

Mary Cierebiej first was a social worker, then she was an urban planner. Since the spring of 2008, she has been selling businesses on moving to or expanding in Lorain County.

With the economy suffering through the worst financial storm and credit shortage since the Great Depression, finding businesses willing to take the risk to expand is a little like trying to finding someone to buy your tickets for the Dec. 27 football game against the Oakland Raiders at Cleveland Browns Stadium.

But Ms. Cierebiej thinks she's got an easy job — at least when she compares it to working as a social worker, tending to the needs of children in distress.

“If I could do that, I could do anything,” she said.

Not everyone is made for a career trying to protect abused children, and Ms. Cierebiej, like many before her, looked for an alternative career. She went back school at night, earning a degree in urban studies at Cleveland State University in 1997.

She got a job at Parsons Brinckerhoff, a worldwide engineering and planning consultant with an office in Cleveland, moving on to Lakewood Alive, a nonprofit community development group. Then in 2003 it was on to HNTB Corp., another worldwide engineering and planning firm.

There, one of her big projects was the Opportunity Corridor, the planned highway between Interstate 490 and University Circle.

Of her work at HNTB, Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle Inc., one of the Opportunity Corridor's big supporters, said in nominating Ms. Cierebiej for the 2009 Forty Under 40 class: “She has an unparalleled love and loyalty to this region and she knows how to sell the place and move businesses through a bureaucracy that might otherwise hinder them.”

But she lost that job when the economy crashed in 2008.

“OK, now it's time to decide what I want to do when I grow up,” she recalls thinking.

She quickly landed a job as manager of attraction and expansion at Team Lorain County, a nonprofit that works to attract new business and expand existing businesses in that county. In a stagnant economy, that job may sound like leaping out of the frying pan into the fire, but Ms. Cierebiej thinks otherwise.

“There's a lot of people still growing and expanding,” she said. “You don't think that's happening, but it is.”